One Easy Way to Combat Intrinsic Emotional Eating Podcast with Lindsey House RD

Podcast Summary

Ever walked past a bakery and found yourself standing at the counter ordering a cake that you weren't planning on eating?
Or feeling tired and stressed and reaching for food for comfort?

You're not alone!

Dr O chats to Lindsey House RD.

You'll learn:

• What the difference is between extrinsic and intrinsic triggers to emotional eating
• What can you do about to stop emotional eating.

Transcription of Podcast Episode

Please note this transcription is generated by software. There may be some errors. I hope you find it useful.

Dr Orlena: Hello, and welcome to fit and fabulous with me, Dr. Molina, super, super excited day because we have an amazing guest Lindsay, Lindsay. Welcome. Welcome. Thank you for being here.

Lindsey: Oh my goodness. Thank you so much for having me

Dr Orlena: now. Would you like to start by just telling people who you are and what you do?

Introducing Lindsey House Registered Dietician

Lindsey: All right. So dietician by trade. And what's been really interesting in this journey is personal training has come into it because I was doing some nutrition counseling at an athletic club, and they were like, you should get your personal training license and go ahead and train in between. And honestly, I almost like the personal training better than the food, which is funny to say, but so I have both the training and the nutrition.

Lindsey: And then what I really noticed out of my clients is they constantly said, I know what to do. I just need to do it. So I feel like over these years, I've become more. I've deemed myself an accountability coach with the background of the nutrition and the fitness, but I love the handholding and just taking people through a journey.

Lindsey: I was an outpatient dietician and I. I love that. I love the ability to start with a client and still be with people years later, versus I noticed in hospital, I was kind of like in and out of a room and never knew if my advice was helping or we couldn't really work together. So my happy spot is accountability coaching.

Dr Orlena: I absolutely love it. And I totally agree with you. And I think it's so easy, isn't it? Like, I just kind of thing. In a nutshell, eat vegetables. Good. What do you need to know? I know, I know we can talk about nutrition for hours and hours and hours, but I'm with you. I love that, you know, working out why don't we do the things that we know are good for us and.

How Emotions Stop Us Leading a Healthy Life

Dr Orlena: We know it's all because of our emotions, our emotions mean that we aren't logical. If we were logical, we would all just eat in a healthy way and we wouldn't have to think about it. So it's one of my favorite topics of conversation. And today I'm super excited to talk to you because you share my passion and we've come up with a really interesting topic to talk about.

Dr Orlena: So do you want to lead us in and just tell us what you're going to tell us?

Lindsey: Absolutely. I have to first tell your listeners I've been been bingeing on your episodes and loving them. I feel like you're just such an easy listen and all of your information just feels so spot on that. I just, I was like, this is so good.

Let’s Talk about Emotional Eating

Lindsey: So thank you. Thank you for putting. Wonderful. Medically based insight weekly. Yeah. So your point of emotional eating, I do feel like this is a passion for me in a frustration for a lot of my clients, because obviously if it was that easy, we just change. Right. And then that whole stigma that comes with just eat less or just, just work out.

Lindsey: Like it's not that easy. There's these onion layers that come back that we need to continually understand within ourselves. And I thought this would be fun to do with your listeners today. It's just really helped with that insight building and breaking down emotional, eating really into two components.

Internal and External Triggers to Emotional Eating

Lindsey: And that comes with there's internal and external. When we think about emotional eating and we can go into this that we have cues, right? We have triggers when it comes to emotional eating. And so let's just break it down to external. First external is when we see something, this is kind of like the fluffy part of emotional eating externals, because something smells good or it looks good.

Lindsey: Or we see an ad on TV. It it's one of those, like our pleasure senses go off and we go, I want it. I have

Advertising is an Example of an External Trigger to Emotionally Eat

Dr Orlena:. I tell you what it's advertising and you know, I'm totally with you here. And, you know, on my Facebook group, I put up lovely images and talk about like, you know, what's your self sabotaging and things like this.

Dr Orlena: And I find myself going through all those beautiful images on the internet to pick one out. And I, you know, Google by typing cake or cookies. And I see all these amazing cakes and these amazing cookies. Oh, my goodness. If that was in front of me right now, which luckily it isn't, there's no way I wouldn't be eating it, but you know, this is what advertisers play on.

Dr Orlena: Isn't it back constantly showing us the things that if they weren't in our minds, Right. We would happen to get on with our lives.

External Triggers are Things we See, Hear or Smell

Lindsey: They spent millions, right. Researching this, bringing in psychologists to figure out what does make, which brings me to this point of there've been studies done with the brain, that there are areas that light up when we think pleasure.

Lindsey: Right. And so when we think food pleasure. That when you're in that moment. And if it is just external triggers going on your brain lights up, you want it. And so then the question is always, well, what am I supposed to do about that? Well, distraction is like the number one tip. I can give your listeners today when it comes to just external, emotional.

Lindsey: And that means if you can find 15 minutes to walk away, do something. With, and here's the really, like, you have to promise yourself if you still want it after that 15 minutes, you're going to allow yourself to have it because if you let deprivation stay there, like deprivational thinking, saying I can't have it.

Lindsey: I shouldn't have it. Then that area of the brain stays lit. But if you tell yourself I'm allowed to have it, just go pleasantly distract, do something you like, maybe something done that makes you feel good. A lot of times that's enough time to let that light. Area of the brain calm back down. And then by the time we get back to it, it's not that strong want anymore.

Dr Orlena: I tell you what it is for me. It's when I've walked past, we have these beautiful bakeries here. Everyone goes out to these beautiful little patisserie bakeries and buys their loaf of bread. And then they have croissants and nice little participants. But as you're walking along, you can smell that lovely sort of flowery buttery smell.

Dr Orlena: Yes. And, you know, I've trained myself just to walk past, but that as well as another of those triggers. So yeah, and I totally hear what you're saying with the deprivation. And I would add in a little extra rule there if I may, which is, if you are going to then eat it, the rule is you have to enjoy it. You have to love, love, love, eating it.

Dr Orlena: You have to slow down. I'm going to say that again, slow down and savor it and go, okay. If I'm going to eat it, I'm going to enjoy it. And I'm not going to feel guilty afterwards.

Lindsey: Yes, I, a lot of times give my clients this one to 10 rating scale. And if a food is not an eight, nine or a 10, it's a leave it.

Lindsey: But to your point, like my guess is that bakery would be a 10 or an 11 or 12 on your scale where like, when you do allow yourself to have it. Yes. Enjoy and no guilt. Yes. Thank you for adding that it celebrate. And we have to remember, like you've trained yourself to walk by, and that works first. And then for some people it's like, they can do it when they're at like a higher energy level and their day.

It’s Easier to Avoid External Triggers when You’re Feeling Strong and Full of Energy

Lindsey: When that willpower dwindles throughout the day. Cause the energy's dwindling sometimes it's the distraction. And the sense of I've talked to one client lost like 15 pounds because they took a different route home from work where they didn't see all that fast food, you know, like we can add in those little areas where, how can I just avoid it in the first place so that I don't have to pull that extra energy to avoid if that makes sense.

Dr Orlena: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that's, you know, all the staff I'm going on about habits and habits and how. That's habits and there's so much work on habits being, you know, the cue being geographical, like, you know, you, as you say, you're coming home from work and you get into that habit of, Hey, this is the fast food place that I stop at because it's on my route home.

Dr Orlena: And if you change your route, then you break that habit. It's amazing. I had one.

Lindsey: I wouldn't let get ads. She wasn't allowed to like pull her newspaper in anymore because the second she saw the ads for all the new fun things that like fast food was putting out or restaurants were putting out that was her trigger, remove the ad, remove the trigger.

Lindsey: It was just so I like external because it feels a little. I guess a little easier. Nothing's easy, but it does feel slightly easier than the internal, which we can talk

Dr Orlena: about. Yes, I've been to internal. So external is when you see pictures and smiles or anything that is outside you and triggers you. And.

Dr Orlena: We're going to intentionally distract ourselves hopefully for 15 minutes. And then if we still really want to eat it, we're going to allow ourselves to eat it, but we have to really, really, really enjoy it. Those are the rules. Okay. Tell us about internal

Lindsey: perfect summary for summary. Thank you. Okay.

What are Internal Triggers to Emotional Eating? Emotions!

Lindsey: Internal. This is the tricky one, because these are all the things that have been layered in throughout our life. And it deals much more with an emotional state of. A lot of people think emotional eating is just like sad or happy. It's everything. It's tired. It's you could be in a resentful mood. You could be in lonely is

Dr Orlena: a big for me, bought mine is bored.

Dr Orlena: Like, you know, oh, I'm sitting at my computer for hours in the morning. Getting through my work, some of the work I love, but it's not just chatting to amazing people like you in the morning. It's often, you know, writing stuff and I get bored and luckily I'm aware of this. But yeah, boredom and stress is another big one.

Dr Orlena: I see a huge

Common Internal Triggers Include Boredom, Stress, Lack of Self Worth

Lindsey: one. Yes. Thank you for saying that. I would say board stress. Really our, and are probably the three that I hear the most, but of course the other ones trickle into. And so the thing with any of these emotions, it is human nature. We don't like feeling our emotions. Like it's not fun to feel border.

Lindsey: It's not fun to feel mad or sad. And so we're trying to. Correct incorrect quickly, that emotion. And so one of the things as we're talking about this is that it's really important to sit in an emotion and allow yourself to feel it with the promise. And this is important. Every emotion has a beginning, a peak and an end.

Lindsey: And when we are in that emotion, especially when we're in the peak of that emotion, it doesn't feel like it's going to end. So what we're trying to do is ended. But if we can like use our wise mind and know it will end on its own that like, maybe we could be a little better about letting ourselves feel the whole process of the emotion versus going to the food to try to quickly correct it.

Lindsey: So I don't, yeah. You said that you're as, as bored, what are some of the tools that you have used to get out of the boredom?

Your Entire Routine Can Help You Not Emotionally Eat

Dr Orlena: Quite often I'll just go, okay, I'm bored. Just get on with doing whatever the work is that I'm doing, because really it's just a work avoidance technique.

Dr Orlena: So it's about looking at my day and working out how I structure the work that I do. If I, I also like, sort of like move around in the daytime as well, because I know that it's really easy to be sedentary. And part of that sitting and using your brain is like my body isn't moving and my body likes to move.

Dr Orlena: So it can be really easy, particularly in, I'm telling you about how we're in a big house and not in a little house, in a little house. I found it so difficult to go and move. I would have to literally walk outside and walk around the little swimming pool that we had there. It just felt so cramped.

Movement Can Help You Not Emotionally Eat

Dr Orlena: Whereas here I can go outside and be in the countryside or walk around the garden or actually have space to move. Like there, it was really difficult to even do a star jump without fear of knocking something, but, you know, put on a music, put on music for a few minutes and dance and just so many different ways of doing it.

Dr Orlena: But, and I think another thing for me is. Allowing my cell. So, you know, I schedule in a snack in the morning. So I allow myself to have a snack, which is normally fruit and some nuts. And so having, like saying, okay, well, it doesn't really matter when the date, when you have that, you can have it. So, you know, if I feel a bit bored and then I go and have my snack, that is a scheduled snack, which is part of my 24 hours eating.

Dr Orlena: So there's no guilt. What are your big tips?

Keeping Your Energy Levels High Can Help You Not Emotionally Eat

Lindsey: Yeah, no. So I'm going to go back to the tired moment for me because it brings out the whole insight building. Again, it took until I was pregnant to really link the two where I'm going, holy cow, because I know I'm tired. I. Seeking fast food. Like it's my job.

Lindsey: Like I never really saw that before. And so with something like tired, I had to get to this point of permission to take a nap, which I think is it's hard. Like you have four kiddos. I have to now dif to carve out that time. A lot of times we need to attend to a need and. Because of coffee because of whatever, you know, even with yours, the board, like it's easy to be like, Nope, I'm going to keep working and I'm going to just go through and grab my snack.

Lindsey: And so it's attend to, it is really important, attended the need. And then if that is still not working, distraction still comes into play even with internal and then permission still comes into play. And just really recognizing that first and foremost, we have to understand what the Lincoln. Why are we doing it?

Getting Support Can Help You Stop Emotional Eating

Lindsey: Because if you don't even know yet that you're tired eating or bored eating or whatnot, like we have to dive in and I'm sure your programs do that as well. Like, let's discover why we're doing what. Yeah. I would

Dr Orlena: say you can't change something that you're not aware of. And that, so the first step is self-awareness and that self-awareness.

Dr Orlena: Isn't like, oh, I become aware. And suddenly I magically changed everything. Unfortunately, it's not quite like that. And that normally what happens is you're aware, you're aware, you're aware, you know, I'm still aware and gradually you start changing things I would say. But I always say to people you can't change stuff that you're not aware of.

Dr Orlena: So that self-awareness piece is amazing. And when you get to, Hey, I'm frustrated or another emotion about. That piece will, that frustration is spurring you on to do something about it. So another thing I always think is really interesting is our emotions are interesting to pay attention, to like they have a message for us.

Dr Orlena: And we like to just say, okay, I don't like to feel these emotions, but actually when we stand and look our emotions and think, okay, what's going on here? Why do I feel this emotion? There's often something underneath. And that doesn't mean that every single time it's like, oh my goodness, it's an amazing jam.

Dr Orlena: If I hadn't listened to that, my life wouldn't be complete. Sometimes it's just like, okay, now I understand. But there is a message there,

Lindsey: right? 100% agree. And I also think it's important to tell everyone today, like we are covering kind of a baseline of knowledge with the idea that. This is a great time to recommend referrals, too.

Lindsey: If your emotional eating is to the point where you're like, I can't get it under control. I am such a huge advocate of therapists and really like pulling our team together, doing one of your courseworks and having a therapist in the team and having a dietician, like don't be afraid to build your team.

Lindsey: Depending on your situation, your individual journey, again, like you and I are covering broad skiing baseline, but everybody's so individualized, I

Dr Orlena: think always, always look for support. I find this frustrating that so many people think that they need to learn how to change all of these things, whether it's emotional, eating, or learning, how to become healthy by themselves.

Dr Orlena: I think getting support is a really good idea what, however, that support looks like, but having some kind of support is a really, really good idea and thinking this idea that, oh my goodness, I can do it by myself. Well, the reality is, and science shows us that if we try and do stuff by ourselves, You know, changing the way we eat and our emotions and things that essentially we end up going back to our old ways of being and that getting support and having accountability and help is the fastest and quickest and most efficient way to make changes.

Lindsey: Yes. And let's also just talk about expectations really fast because I heard this and I totally agree. Shifting our expectations is the most under utilized tool that we don't do when we're trying to make these habit changes. And so when you start to think about that and you go, okay, if my expectations.

Lindsey: To your point of now that I've built inside, around my emotional eating, I expect it to be done. I want to get over it and move on. Our expectation should really be about, okay, if I'm doing it seven days a week, can I do it too? Can I get my, and then with full expectation of on any given day, it's going to rear its ugly head and I'm going to deal with it and just know that it, you know, like our ultimate goal is to get it under control, but the idea of having it solved and done forever.

Lindsey: Is is not very realistic. And I don't know if you notice that even with, to your point, the board eating I'm sure there's other days where it kind of is much stronger of a one. And same thing with tired. You and I were talking, we've been struggling with some COVID running through the houses. And I last week noticed everything that I felt like I had going well through January.

Lindsey: All of a sudden came to this screeching halt, like business stuff, kind of fell out of control, kids, sports, everything where I noticed I was doing a ton of comforting through food through not working out that day. But. It all comes back like this week's a different week. I know what to come back to. So just again, permission as well as expectations.

Dr Orlena: Yeah, no, frankly. That's fabulous. So what are your top three tools for dealing with internal triggers of emotional eating?

Lindsey: Yes, that's a good, okay. So I am going to go back to. Dealing with it does come down to distracting from it. I know I'm sounding like a broken record attending to it. I can just picture so many listeners out there going I'm tired, but I mean, who actually schedules in a nap for their day?

Lindsey: I think that we're just not good about when we say attend to a need. Do you need to attend to your schedule? Do you need to schedule and like if busy is one of your issues, are you blocking, are you setting boundaries? So attending is a really big deal. And then permission, I feel like it's a broken record.

Lindsey: I already said all three, but that, those are my three tips. So distraction attend to the feeling and permission to just experience the journey with the idea that you're not giving yourself permission to quit or not work hard at it. You're just giving yourself permission to not be perfect. Little direction, not perfection.

Dr Orlena: Perfect. Perfect. I love it. Yes. Striving for forward progress, not perfection. Fabulous. Fabulous. Thank you so much. So where can people find more of you?

Lindsey: Health accountability, coach.com is my website. And I have a podcast as well there that I was so fortunate to interview Dr. Elena. So we'll both be coming out around the same time.

Lindsey: But that's the best place my website. You can contact me if you ever would like to be interviewed. If you need a little accountability in your life. And that's I'm on Facebook. I'm on Instagram. I'm on LinkedIn at house lifestyles is always my tagline.

Dr Orlena: Perfect. Fabulous. Thank you so much for spending some time with us today.

Lindsey: Thank you so much for having me. I love our time together.

Connect with Lindsey House

Website: https://www.healthaccountabilitycoach.com

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Written By Dr Orlena

Dr Orlena Kerek (MBChB from the University of Bristol, UK) trained as a pediatric doctor. She is now a family health coach. She helps busy mums who want to feel amazing by eating healthy food, enjoy a healthy life, get back into their honeymoon shorts and teach their kids healthy habits all without thinking about it.

Want support and help in your weight loss journey?

Book a chat with Dr Orlena: https://bookme.name/drorlena/emotional-eating